


The White Sands of Morar

by Luzula



Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Second Sight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/pseuds/Luzula
Summary: Two years after the end of the Rising, Ewen Cameron returns to Morar.
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant, Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Comments: 13
Kudos: 11





	The White Sands of Morar

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Hyarrowen and Regshoe for beta-reading! <3
> 
> Colonel Crauford is canonical, though is only mentioned in an aside in Gleam in the North and does not appear on-screen. Private Gregory is borrowed from Hyarrowen's 'An Ally Better Than the Sidhe'.

'A Highland gentleman to see you, sir,' said his ensign, a young man from Kent who had likely never been north of Manchester before obtaining his recent posting at Fort William. 

'Send him in,' said Colonel Crauford calmly, from where he was seated at his desk. 

The man who entered had almost to duck his head to avoid the lintel: Cameron of Ardroy. He still had his estate, Colonel Crauford recalled, though had undoubtedly deserved to lose it. Still, it was a sobering influence on a man, having something to lose, and he had a small child as well. He had been no trouble. So far. 

'How may I help you, Mr Cameron?' he said briskly. 

'Colonel Crauford.' Mr Cameron of Ardroy nodded to him and then stood for a short while gathering his thoughts, his hands absently folding his bonnet. 'I need some...information, which I do not know if you have, but perhaps you know someone who does.' 

'Yes?' The Colonel's curiosity was piqued. 

'In August of '46, a Major Keith Windham, of the Royal Scots, was killed on the coast, at Morar. I wish to know the location of his grave.' 

'Oh?' Colonel Crauford could not resist provoking him a little, to see what he would say. 'What could a Cameron chieftain want with an enemy's grave?' 

Mr Cameron was of course weaponless, but despite his stillness, his looming figure momentarily suggested his capacity for violence. His hand tightened on his bonnet. 

But the moment passed. 'I wish,' he said, mildly enough, 'to lay flowers on it.' 

'Indeed? Well, I shall not stand in your way, then.' Curious as this was, it was clear that further such questions would not be profitable. 'But give me some details, so that I may help you better. What was Major Windham's business on the coast?'

'He was there to search for the Prince,' Mr Cameron said unapologetically. Oh, certainly he had deserved to lose his estate, if not more. 

Colonel Crauford raised an eyebrow, but let it pass. 'Stay here, and I will make inquiries.' 

He left the Highlander with his ensign, and consulted with his staff, some of whom had been here since the rebellion, and found, by chance, a private soldier who had been one of Major Windham's party. 

'He had bled out when we got to him, sir,' Private Gregory told Mr Cameron. 'We were sorry, for he was a good officer. Stabbed to the heart, he had been, and I suppose it was those rebels who got away to the ship that did it. Though one of those rebels ran straight at us—he must have been mad. We got him, at least.' 

Mr Cameron listened to this with a peculiarly wooden expression on his handsome face. 'And his grave?' 

'We buried him where he fell, sir, on the beach. There's a wooden cross marks the spot. I heard later that his family wanted his body taken back to England, but nothing came of it.' 

'And—the rebel who ran at you? Did you bury him as well?' 

Gregory nodded. 'Yes, nearby. We didn't mark his grave, though.' 

'Thank you, Private Gregory,' Mr Cameron said gravely. 

It was Colonel Crauford's business to sniff out as much as he could of the goings-on among these Jacobite clansmen, defeated though they were, but he never did find out why Cameron of Ardroy should go to such lengths in order to lay flowers on the grave of an English staff officer. 

***

Ewen was glad to see Fort William disappear behind the Corpach, as he walked west along the shore of Loch Eil. To have his oppressor prying into his most private affairs! Ewen tightened his fist impotently again as he thought of it. But he had, to be fair, exposed himself to it—there had been no other choice, if he was to find out where Keith was buried. 

Ewen thought the last words deliberately, for they were still painful to him. He had put off this visit for too long: at first, it had been impossible, since he was in exile; then, when he and Alison had returned, there had been too much business at Ardroy. And Donald was still but an infant, and he had not wanted to leave them. 

But now, it was soon two years on the day since that fateful night at Morar, and Ewen must, for his peace of mind and to honour Keith's memory, visit his grave. Alison had allowed that since she would have no husband but for Major Windham, she must let him do it. 

He was on foot, for their one horse was needed to bring in the hay. Ewen felt a sting of conscience at leaving his tenants to that work on their own, but better that than the shearing. 

By the time he reached the house of Fassefern that night, he felt a slight twinge in his thigh at every step, despite the more than two years that had passed since Culloden. He was received cordially enough by his cousin John Cameron of Fassefern, though Ewen could never quite forget that he had not been out, and so had shared neither in the triumphs nor the dangers of the Rising, and had kept his estate where many others had lost theirs. But he could not in fairness blame John for that, since someone must take that role—the clan must go on, after all. 

For a mercy, he was not assigned the small room that he and Keith would have shared, had not Keith escaped. He had no need for further prompts to his memory. 

Another memory, the next day at Glenfinnan: Ewen could still feel, despite the shadow of Culloden, the proud lifting of his heart at the sight of the green mound where his Prince had declared himself, and where eight hundred Camerons had raised their voices to follow him. 

He recalled, too, Keith's warning, which he had not heeded. 

Could he, then, have acted differently? In the event, Keith had been right, but that had not been a sure thing: who could have said that they might not have won? And besides that, Lochiel had called, and he had followed. No, he could not have stayed back. 

And yet, it had been Keith who paid the price, not him. 

After Glenfinnan, there were no more memories along his path: his journey to Morar the first time had been along hidden braes and burns, deep in the hills, and he had never come this way before. 

The sun stood in the west when Ewen reached Morar in the evening of the third day since he left Ardroy, descending into red clouds, though the sky was clear above him. He had only seen the beach by moonlight before, but it was etched into his memory. 

And there was the cross, wooden and plain. 

But he owed something also to Lachlan, and he turned aside to pay that debt first. Nothing marked his grave, so Ewen laid his flowers on the sand. That tangled knot of sorrow and anger might never fully be unravelled, but he could acknowledge, now, that his foster-brother had acted in loyalty to him, though it had caused him such grief. 

He sat there for a while, thinking of Lachlan, and Neil, and the three of them as children, of the time Lachlan had almost drowned in the loch, and how Ewen taught him to swim after that. Of Neil learning to pipe, and how he and Lachlan had teased his abortive first attempts. Of how they had both followed him without hesitation into the Rising, and saved his life when he lay wounded at Culloden. 

His cheeks were wet when he finally stood. The sun had set, and the moon was rising. 

And so it was by moonlight that Ewen turned back to Keith's grave, and his heart already sore. He knelt on it, setting down the poor bouquet of late summer flowers that he had picked: common purple heather, and delicate bell heather, and goldenrod. 

'You never even liked the heather,' he muttered, and then he was suddenly sobbing, and he grasped a fistful of the dry sand and clenched his fist around it. It all came back to him, Keith's heavy body in his arms, the blood that he could not stay, dark in the moonlight. 

And for the first and only time in his life, a touch of the second sight seemed to come over Ewen Cameron then: he saw, as he had not then, what he had truly meant to Keith Windham, and it took his breath away. 

'Keith,' he whispered. 'I didn't know. You—' 

Ewen had thought of the war and the way it might have gone. But his own life—that it should also have such turning points: in that flash of insight he could see them now, a whole other life he did not have, where Keith—where they—

And his own feelings, seen clearly all of a sudden, not a change, but a veil drawn from what he had never quite admitted to himself. He looked down at his hands, where two rings gleamed softly in the moonlight: one for Keith, and one for Alison. 

But it was not, after all, a choice. Keith was gone. And Alison—she was his wife, the mother of his son, how could he wish it to be otherwise? 

Still, he would give this night to Keith. Ewen wrapped himself in the plaid he had brought as a blanket and lay down on the cold sand. Another man might have hesitated to sleep by the graves of two men who had both died by violence, but despite the prophecy that he had seen fulfilled, Ewen Cameron was not a superstitious man. And why should their shades, if they had not found peace, wish to harm him? 

Such a short time he had had with Keith, constrained by war and conflicting duty, and yet as Ewen drifted to sleep, he found his dreams vivid enough to warm him, though the wind blew cold from the sea. 

As the day dawned clear, Ewen Cameron stirred and sat up, then shook the dew from his damp plaid, folded and packed it. He stood there for a long moment, then raised his right hand to kiss the ring on it, and then departed, walking south along the shore and then east, towards Ardroy and home.


End file.
